


catching little words (but the meaning's thin)

by Veridique



Category: Vampire Academy & Related Fandoms
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Panic Attacks, Post-Canon, Title from a Hozier Song, canon compliant mental illness (I know they don't say it in so many words but), dimitri has ptsd and I'll fight Richelle on this one, panic induced aphasia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-01
Updated: 2019-06-01
Packaged: 2020-03-20 04:27:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18985255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Veridique/pseuds/Veridique
Summary: Rose struggles to speak Russian. Dimitri struggles to speak at all.





	catching little words (but the meaning's thin)

"Something isn't right, babe  
I keep catching little words but the meaning's thin  
I'm somewhere outside my life, babe  
I keep scratching but somehow I can't get in  
So we're slaves to any semblance of touch  
Lord we should quit but we love it too much"  
-Hozier, "Sedated"

She hears him say something as she brushes her teeth. At first she pauses, thinking he’s speaking to her from the other room. His voice continues, but the volume is low and the cadence almost mumbled, as if he’s talking to himself.

Her next thought is that he’s praying. He saves his prayers for when she’s not in the immediate vicinity, although she knows him well enough by now that she can spot his silent, hidden-moment prayers. She dawdles a bit longer in the bathroom than she needs to—swishing her mouthwash longer than normal, taking care to wipe up every drop of water from the counter—to give him time to finish his prayer without her intruding.

But as she finally enters the bedroom, she can still hear him murmuring to himself. And from his posture—seated on their bed, shoulders hunched, staring at the eastern wall like a sunflower at dawn, as if he’s desperate for a glimpse of light—he’s not praying.

She wants to speak his name, but part of her is afraid to wake him from this trance. Instead she walks toward him, ensuring that her slippers slap audibly against the soles of her feet so that he knows she’s coming, and sits on the bed beside him, just closer than arm’s length.

His volume hasn’t changed, but she can hear him clearly enough now to be certain he isn’t speaking English. After a few moments, she’s able to pick up the same phrase he’s repeating over and over again. One word in it sounds familiar, and she wracks her brain for the bits of Russian she might still remember before it clicks; it’s on of the first words she learned, sitting in the airport with a _Russian for Dummies_ book, a word that she used over and over again, a word that’s critical when you don’t know many others in the language.

_Prostite._

__

__

_I’m sorry._

There’s more in the phrase, another few syllables that Dimitri keeps repeating, but she knows this word for certain. And seeing as Dimitri is lost within his own mind, she can only imagine the kinds of things he might be apologizing to the universe for.

“Dimitri?” she whispers tentatively. He doesn’t give any indication he’s even heard her, still repeating his repentant mantra on an endless loop.

She swallows and tries again, this time minimizing the vowel sound in the first syllable, rolling the R, trying to make her pronunciation as Russian as possible. “Dmitriy?”

The switch from the anglicized pronunciation seems to click in his head, as his face turns just slightly toward her and then down toward his lap. His rapid repetitions slow, then fade to a stop.

Rose searches mentally for more Russian words in her memory and finally settles on caveman talk. “Why?” she asks. “Why sorry?”

She doesn’t know what she’ll do if he responds with a string of rapid-fire Russian that she can’t hope to understand, but her gut tells her that this will help him; she’s giving him a chance to speak and be heard, if not understood. And with how secretive he is about his time as a Strigoi, he might be more willing to speak if she won’t be able to understand what he says.

Dimitri slowly shakes his head back and forth before speaking again, in the same mumbled voice, a new litany. Rose strains to pick out words again before realizing that she knows these words well; they aren’t Russian at all.

_Kyrie eleison._

__

__

_Kyrie eleison._

She recognizes them from church—she still isn’t much of a believer, but she goes to mass every Sunday with Lissa and the rest of her guard.

_Kyrie eleison._

__

__

_Lord have mercy._

He says the words over and over, hardly pausing between repetitions or for breaths. He says them as if he’s the opposite of a drowning man, as if too much air in his lungs will suffocate him. He says them with no inflection, and that scares Rose most of all: if he were begging, he could be comforted; if he were angry, he could be soothed. But he speaks his petition for mercy like a talking doll whose string had been pulled a thousand times in a row, as if he has to catch up before he can interact with the world again.

So she waits.

And she waits.

It’s agonizing, watching him suffer in the prison of his own mind. When he begins quaking, tense muscles vibrating like the plucked string of a cello, she can’t stand waiting anymore and gently sets her hand on his shoulder.

He jerks his shoulder back, knocking her hand off. But a moment later, his voice fades to silence, and he holds out his hand to her.

She takes it, intertwining their fingers and rubbing gentle circles into his hand with her thumb. As she looks up to his face, searching for any hint of what he might need, she sees his lips still moving, spelling out _kyrie eleison_ without making a sound.

“Do you want me to call Sonya?” she asks, once the excruciating silence becomes too much to bear. 

He doesn’t respond immediately, puzzling over her words for a long moment. Just as she’s beginning to consider how she might repeat the question using the vocabulary of a slow Russian toddler, he finally whispers “No,” as if he can’t coax his voice to be any louder than a breath.

“Do you want me to go find a priest?” It’s late, but the Court never sleeps, and there’s no shortage of churches. “Or we could call a crisis hotline—I can find one with someone who speaks Russian, if that’s easier—” 

“No,” his barely-there whisper erupts again.

“I don’t know what you need, Dimitri.” She’s trying to stay calm, but the desperation in her voice betrays the tension in her heart. “You’re hurting, and I want to do something, but I don’t know how to help—”

“Rose.” He doesn’t look at her, but his grip tightens on her hand. “I need you, Roza.”

“You have me,” she replies instantly. When he doesn’t respond, she draws his hand closer, presses it to her heart. “Dimitri, look at me.”

He obeys, and she can see he’s holding back tears. 

“You have me.” Her voice falters at the sight of Dimitri, usually so strong, fragile like a teacup caught a second before it hits the ground. “I’m here.”

With his free hand, he cradles the side of her face, thumb brushing against her ear, fingertips entangled in her hair. He pulls her in close, and she leans in, hoping her weight against him will ground him in the here and now.

After a few minutes, he shifts positions and lays down on the bed, on top of the covers, his strong arms positioning Rose on top of him. She tries to prop herself up on her elbows, but at his nudging, she transfers her entire body weight onto his torso. Still holding his hand, she presses soft kisses into his callouses, the crooks between his fingers, anywhere she can remind him _I’m here, I’m here._

She wishes she could promise _I’ll always be here_ , but their lives are unpredictable, and she doesn’t make promises she isn’t sure she can keep. And “always” isn’t always a comforting word to someone whose nightmares center around immortality.

As his eyes finally meet hers, she can feel the tension in his body fade. “It’s over,” he mumbles, his hand suddenly falling slack in hers.

She moves off and to the side of him, clutching his hand in both of hers. “What’s over? What was that?”

“Panic attack.” His voice is less tense than it was a few minutes ago, but more tired.

“Is that…” She’s about to say _normal_ but thinks better of it. “Does that happen a lot?”

“It happens.”

“Have you talked to your therapist about it?”

“Many times.”

His terse stoicism is often attractive, but now she just finds it frustrating. “But it still happens?”

“Mental illness isn’t something that goes away when you take a pill, Rose.”

“How do you know? You haven’t tried.” Her words sound childish and mean, and she tries to adjust her tone, but she finds it’s hard to be the calm voice of reason while watching Dimitri suffer. "And medication helped Lissa a lot—”

“Medication combined with therapy,” he reminds her. “And there are more medication options for depression than for PTSD.” 

“Then what’s the treatment for PTSD?” Her voice is tinged with a little more of a challenge than she intended; she’s using it to hide her worry.

For a half an instant, she catches Dimitri donning a neutral expression, the hint of a polite smile on his lips. It’s the face she’s come to think of as his armor: as long as he’s wearing it, no one gets in. If anyone else were around, she knows she’d have no chance of getting him to let it down. But it’s just him and her, and she watches as he resists the instinct to brush her off and tell her not to worry. “In the short term, I learn to ride through the panic attacks. In the long term, I learn to cope with triggers so I’m less likely to have panic attacks at all.”

“Triggers,” she says, exploring the word in her mouth. It’s a new term for her, in the context of mental health, at least, but she understands its meaning. “Like what?”

“That’s long term, Roza. I’m not there yet.”

“I want to know so I can help you.”

“It’s not that I—” He cuts himself off and squeezes his eyes shut, and Rose can see his diaphragm expand his belly in carefully measured breaths. “It’s not that I don’t want to tell you, Roza. I can’t.”

“I don’t understand.” She can probably count on one hand the number of times she’s admitted not knowing about something, generally preferring to bluster and bravado her way through. But Dimitri’s vulnerability is contagious.

“You saw just now? How it took everything in me to answer a yes or no question? How the only words I could speak were phrases repeated like a broken record? That happens, sometimes. I lose track of words, and it’s hard to speak, and…I feel like I’m losing control. Losing control of everything.”

“And it’s not just in English,” he adds, guessing her next thoughts. “I lose all words, in all languages. Sometimes I get stuck on one phrase. Sometimes, no matter what I’m thinking or trying to say, one phrase is all that comes out.”

She nods, as if she understands. But she can’t imagine the agony Dimitri’s describing, of being locked in the prison of her own skin with no words to reach the outside world.

“You don’t have to tell me,” she murmurs, holding him tight. “About your triggers.”

“I want to, Roza.” His entire frame is tense, as if he’s holding in his words like a breath. “Believe me, I want to.”

“You don’t have to tell me,” she repeats, “but I hope you tell someone. Not now, but someday. Your therapist. Sonya. Lissa’s a damn good listener. Hell, even Christian—”

“I’m not going to burden the queen or her consort with my problems,” he says, with an almost-smile on his face, as if he’s dismissing some hare-brained idea of hers.

“Stop that.” Her words come quick, and even though she’s been trying to be gentle with him, her tone leaves no doubt that she’s serious. “She’s the one who brought you back. You two have a bond—and that means a lot, coming from me. And you’re going to be by Christian’s side for the rest of your lives. He’s your charge, but that doesn’t mean he can’t be your friend.” She doesn’t say his name, but she thinks of Ivan, how quietly mournful Dimitri was when she first met him, and she knows Dimitri’s thinking of him, too. “And you are no burden. You are never a burden.”

He turns his face into the pillow, but she doesn’t miss the shaking of his shoulders. She rubs his back with firm pressure, assuring and reassuring him that she’s here. That she’s not leaving.

“You are not a burden,” she tells him again. “You have never been a burden.”

He falls asleep on the damp pillow not long after. She says a silent prayer on his behalf, then curls up beside him.


End file.
